Werner Herzog: Scariest film professor ever?

Herzog –- who just directed the new Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring Nicolas Cage –- is getting back to his non-Hollywood roots by starting a guerilla filmmaking school. Rogue Film School’s first long weekend seminar (at a reasonable $1,450) will be held in January in Los Angeles, with other locales to follow. Don’t expect shooting and editing tips, the school’s website says topics will include “the art of lockpicking and…the exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully.” Herzog himself says: “The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum…” Surviving participants will get a signed copy of Herzog’s Conquest of the Useless.

This is the infamously crazy Fitzcarraldo director who actually hauled a 320-ton ship over a mountain (without special effects) to tell the story of a different crazy man who hauled a ship over a mountain. Remember that crazy Smokejumpers director on Entourage (played by Stellan Skarsgard)? Classic Herzog.

So would you have to be brave, crazy, or both to go through Werner’s boot camp? Or could this brilliant director be the best lock-picking, bullet-dodging teacher ever?